Skip To Content
JEWISH. INDEPENDENT. NONPROFIT.
Fast Forward

Israeli Hackers Offered Foreign Leaders’ Emails To Cambridge Analytica

Israeli hackers accessed the private email accounts of two heads of state and offered information to the data analytics team that worked on Donald Trump’s presidential campaign, The Guardian reported Wednesday.

The British data firm Cambridge Analytica, which has used information pulled from Facebook users to consult on political campaigns around the world, was working on the reelection campaign of Nigerian president Goodluck Jonathan in 2015 when employees met with Israeli contractors and were offered a USB stick with information on his opponent Muhammadu Buhari, who would go on to win. Cambridge Analytica employees believed that the USB stick contained hacked emails.

Company leaders urged staff to search through the data for incriminating information.

“It made everyone feel really uncomfortable,” one source told the Guardian. “They wanted people to load it into their email programs.”

Employees who spoke to the Guardian believed that the material included medical records. “I’m 99% sure of that,” a source said. “Or if they didn’t have his medical records they at least had emails that referred to what was going on.”

That same Israeli team also reportedly obtained information on the opposition leader of the Caribbean nation of St. Kitts and Nevis, Timothy Harris, who is now prime minister.

The CEO of Cambridge Analytica, Alexander Nix, told undercover reporters for Britain’s Channel 4 that they “use some Israeli companies” who are “very effective in intelligence gathering.”

Cambridge Analytica’s parent company denies taking or using stolen personal information. The company is being investigated by special counsel Robert Mueller as part of his inquiry into Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election.

Contact Aiden Pink at [email protected] or on Twitter, @aidenpink

A message from our Publisher & CEO Rachel Fishman Feddersen

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s award-winning, nonprofit journalism during this critical time.

We’ve set a goal to raise $260,000 by December 31. That’s an ambitious goal, but one that will give us the resources we need to invest in the high quality news, opinion, analysis and cultural coverage that isn’t available anywhere else.

If you feel inspired to make an impact, now is the time to give something back. Join us as a member at your most generous level.

—  Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO

With your support, we’ll be ready for whatever 2025 brings.

Republish This Story

Please read before republishing

We’re happy to make this story available to republish for free, unless it originated with JTA, Haaretz or another publication (as indicated on the article) and as long as you follow our guidelines. You must credit the Forward, retain our pixel and preserve our canonical link in Google search.  See our full guidelines for more information, and this guide for detail about canonical URLs.

To republish, copy the HTML by clicking on the yellow button to the right; it includes our tracking pixel, all paragraph styles and hyperlinks, the author byline and credit to the Forward. It does not include images; to avoid copyright violations, you must add them manually, following our guidelines. Please email us at [email protected], subject line “republish,” with any questions or to let us know what stories you’re picking up.

We don't support Internet Explorer

Please use Chrome, Safari, Firefox, or Edge to view this site.